2026 World Cup!

[Headsterx]

World Cup draw @ 12pm EST!!!

Let's get excited about the World Cup draw

The 2026 World Cup officially kicks off June 11. In reality, though, it begins later today with the draw. The World Cup draw sounds like a simple selection show — think of the upcoming College Football Playoff bracket unveiling, or even March Madness’ Selection Sunday — but this is something more, something bigger. I’ll try to condense this: The selection shows many sports fans default to are sort of jazzed-up emails. PDF files could make these hour-long shows obsolete in 10 minutes. The World Cup draw, however, is an entire ceremony, meant to highlight the host country/region (in this case, North America) and emphasize how special this event is. It only happens on the men’s side every four years, etc. There will be speeches, musical performances and even awards in Washington, D.C. It is a spectacle unto itself. A new wrinkle: The World Cup is much bigger this year, as you may know. The field expanded to 48 teams, up from the previous 32 entrants. There is some worry that this waters down competition, but we also have countries making the World Cup for the first time ever. Hello, Cape Verde. So wait, what is actuallyannounced? We’ll find out every group today, with teams drawn from four different pots, as they’re calling them. The pots are comprised of teams of the same perceived stature/ranking. Each group will get one team from each pot. So, each group will theoretically have one team from each talent class. Then we can get into normal group play, which then determines the knockout rounds, so on and so forth. There are still six slots in Pot 4 to be determined, via playoff matches in March. Two other points we need to discuss: Today is a sprawling day, as groups will be overanalyzed within hours of the draw. We’ll have picked a Group of Death, or the hardest group to survive, and a favored World Cup winner. If you want to play around beforehand, use our cool new simulator, which can generate every possible draw for your team: